Towards 'Slow' and 'Moderated' Urbanism

The city-building process in the global South is characterised by both the state and corporate-led production of “fast” cities. It is interesting to note that while many cities in the global North are moving towards alternative development regimes under the “slow city” movement, urban production in traditional societies of the global South is being enslaved to “speed.” The analysis of the changes being brought about in these cities reveals how alternative forms of development and social organisation—termed as slow cities, akin to slow food—can lead to more sustainable cities and “eurhythmia” in urban life

Biological Activities and Molecular Analysis of Novel Dithiocarbazate Complex Compoundson Glioma Cell Lines

The object of research in the exploration of new chemotherapy agents is to kill cancerous cells and not harm the healthy cells. In addition, an effective dose of these agents is essential in conducting clinical studies in the treatment of cancer. In this study, an investigation of the anticancer effects of a group of synthetic compounds on human glioma cell lines was carried out. Initially, 11 compounds were screened using cytotoxicity assays. The most active compounds were found to be derived from bis (S-methyl-I3-N-(2-acetylfuran) dithiocarbazate) (SMDB) and bis (S-benzyl-I3-N-(2-acetylfuran) dithiocarbazate) (SBD4) complexed with zinc, cadmium and platinum ions. The glioma cell lines, A172, U87MG and T98G and normal brain cell line HCN-2, were used in this study. The ICso values of the cell lines treated with the compounds were determined by using (3-4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2-5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Tamoxifen was used as a control as it is the current drug of choice in the treatment of brain cancer. From the cytotoxicity assays, it was found that the compounds which showed the most potential are SMDB-Cd and SMDB-Zn. The ICso values for SMDB-Cd on A172, U87MG, T98G and HCN-2 were O.65IJg/ml, O.29IJg/ml, OAlJg/ml, and 1AlJg/ml, while that for SMDB-Zn were at 3.7IJg/ml, 1.76IJg/ml, 2.71Jg/ml and 7lJg/ml, respectively. The ICso values for tamoxifen for the same cell lines were 6.7IJg/ml, 5.3IJg/ml, 6.31Jg/ml and 6IJg/ml respectively. Several methods were employed towards understanding the mechanism of action at the molecular level for SMDB-Cd and SMDB-Zn on glioma cell lines. Tunel assay displayed the typical morphological features of apoptosis cells with condensed and fragmented nuclei at 48 hours. The percentage of apoptotic cells in all treated cells with tamoxifen, SMDB-Zn and SMDB-Cd were significantly (p<O.05) increased. Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) was used in monitoring the gene expression level of two key genes, Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) and Mouse Double Minute 2 (MDM2). The expression of EGFR gene was suppressed in all three-cell lines. However, MDM2 gene was suppressed only in A172 and T98G. Therefore, the suppression of EGFR and MDM2 by the compounds was one of the pathways to apoptosis in the glioma cells.In the flow cytometry analysis, the effect of SMDB-Cd and tamoxifen on the cell cycle after 3, 6, 12 and 24 hr treatment showed glioma cells A172, U87MG and T98G were arrested in G1 phase and the SMDB-Zn arrested glioma cell lines U87MG, T98G and A172 in, G2/M, S phase and G1 phase, respectively. The SMDB-Cd and tamoxifen arrested the cell cycle by preventing replication (phase specific G1 ) whereas SMDB-Zn was not phase specific which can arrest the cell at any point in the cell cycle. Results, of caspase-8/9 activity assay of tamoxifen, SMDB-Cd and SMDB-Zn on glioma cells showed that caspase-8 activity was significantly induced but no significant activity for caspase-9 was observed. Therefore, the activation of caspase-8 may be the mechanism through which tamoxifen, SMDB-Cd and SMDB-Zn induces apoptosis. The comet assay used to study the genotoxic activity of SMDB-Cd and SMDBZn in CHO cell line showed no genotoxic activity in both compounds. In conclusion, the two compounds have the potential to be developed as chemotherapeutic agents. Nilai ICso untuk sel-sel tersebut yang telah dirawat dengan sebatian-sebatian di-atas dipastikan dengan menggunakan kaedah (3-4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-25- diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MIT). Tamoksifen telah digunakan sebagai kawalan memandangkan ia adalah dadah pilihan semasa dalam rawatan kanser otak. Dari kaedah sitotoksik itu sebatian-sebatian yang ditemui menunjukkan potensi adalah SMDB-Cd dan SMDB-Zn. Nilai ICso untuk SMDB-Cd pada A172, U87MG, T98G dan HCN-2 adalah O.65IJg/ml, O.29IJg/ml, OAlJg/ml, dan 1.4lJg/ml, sementara itu bagi SMDB-Zn adalah 3.7IJg/ml, 1.76IJg/ml, 2.7IJg/ml and 7lJg/ml. Nilai ICso bagi tamoksifen pula untuk sel-sel yang sama tersebut adalah 6.7IJg/ml, 5.3IJg/ml, 6.3IJg/ml and 6lJg/ml. Beberapa kaedah telah dijalankan ke arah memahami mekanisme tindakan SMDB-Cd dan SMDB-Zn tersebut dalam sel-sel glioma pada peringkat molekul. Kaedah Tunel telah menunjukkan ciri-ciri morfologi yang tipikal bagi sel-sel apoptotik dengan nukleusnya yang menjadi padat dan pecah pada 48 jam, peratus sel-sel yang apoptotik dalam semua sel-sel yang dirawat bersama tamoxifen, SMDB-Zn dan SMDB-Cd adalah sangat bermakna (p<O.05). "Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction" (RT-PCR) telah digunakan dalam pemerhatian paras ekspresi gen terhadap dua gen ini, "Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor" (EGFR) dan Mouse Double Minute 2 (MDM2). Ekspresi gen EGFR telah dihalang didalam ketiga-tiga sel yang digunakan

A KD framework in football data analytics: a value co-creation framework for the use of knowledge discovery technologies in the football industry

Investment in sport technologies are expected to grow by 40.1% during 2016-2022 reaching approximately $3.97 billion by 2022. As well the recent changes in technology regulations by The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) since the 2018 World Cup created promising football technologies. This research questions addressing the issue of what is the value of such technologies for professional football teams? and what are the benefits of these technologies? This is achieved by developing a framework for understanding the value co-creation process from the knowledge discovery systems in the football industry. The framework aids in mapping the resources, pinpointing the outputs, identifying the competencies leading into capabilities, and finally in realisation of the value of the final outcomes in that journey. On another words, different teams have different resources that allow them to achieve certain outputs. These outputs enable the coaching team to achieve and maintain certain abilities. By changes in practice the will improve the team ability and enhance their analytical capabilities. Therefore, that will allow and aid the coaching team to gain new outcomes such as improving training strategies, transferring players, and informative match strategies. Additionally, improved understanding of the value co-creation process from the knowledge discovery systems in the football industry answering, why are some teams better able to gain value from investment in knowledge discovery technologies than other teams in the football industry. The framework has been developed in three phases in which semi-structured interviews where used in the first and second phases for developing and validating the framework respectively. The third and final phases is verifying the framework by developing a knowledge discovery maturity model as an online assessment s tool in operationalising the research findings. The main contributions of this research are the adaptation and customisation of Melville et al. (2004) to develop a value co-creation process form knowledge discovery resources. Moreover, applying Agile (APM, 2015) artefacts and techniques and tools in improving the value co-creation process between coaches and data analysts. That s aided in developing the value co-creation knowledge discovery framework in football analytics. Additionally, the development of a key performance indicators balanced scorecard and its adaptation as a in understanding the relationships between the key performance indicators (i.e. physical, psychological, technical and tactical performance indicators). Finally, the development of the knowledge discovery maturity model in football analytics which was used in understanding and pinpointing areas of strength and weakness in the utilisation of the various football resources used in football analytics (human resources, technological resources, value co-creation resources and analytical models used)

A new operational matrix based on Bernoulli polynomials

In this research, the Bernoulli polynomials are introduced. The properties of these polynomials are employed to construct the operational matrices of integration together with the derivative and product. These properties are then utilized to transform the differential equation to a matrix equation which corresponds to a system of algebraic equations with unknown Bernoulli coefficients. This method can be used for many problems such as differential equations, integral equations and so on. Numerical examples show the method is computationally simple and also illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method

The Capability Approach: A proposed framework for experiential learning the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

This qualitative case study uses the Capability Approach (CA) as a framework for experiential learning courses in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, this is a case study of two courses titled Ways of Knowing and Ways of Doing that are offered as undergraduate general credit electives. In this paper, we describe the case study context and provide a brief introduction to the CA. The lead author presents the case study courses\u27 pedagogical framework and describes the materials and methods of the case. Next, we provide a summary of the data collection and analysis alongside thick descriptions of the CA in the context of the case. In the final section, we share reflections for further discussion

Power allocation in carrier aggregation MIMO systems with different power constraints

The target set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the next generation of mobile communications, IMT-Advanced, is to achieve up to 1 Gb/s peak data rates. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology in its latest Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-Advanced) standards in order to meet the performance goals of the next generation, the fourth generation, 4G. The introduction of CA in LTE-Advanced system poses a challenge to the power control function of a CA-MIMO radio link. The problem appears when multiple Carrier Components (CCs), within a single or multiple frequency bands, are allocated to a user. The two challenges studied in this thesis are the different channel characteristics in the different CCs and the multiple power constraints imposed on the mobile equipment: per-CC, per-antenna and per-total transmit power available. This thesis studies the bit error rate (BER) performance of a CA-MIMO radio link with the Modified Hybrid Gradient Optimal Power Allocation (MHGOPA) algorithm. In order to examine the validity of the MHGOPA algorithm, the results are compared to a baseline uniform power allocation approach. The results of the simulations are obtained for different environments: Indoor Hotspot, Urban Microcell, Suburban Microcell and Urban Macrocell. The results show that the MHGOPA algorithm generally outperforms the baseline uniform power allocation when the channel conditions are good with typical SNR values above 8-10 dB, depending on the environment. The results also show a marginal improvement on the BER in some scenarios when relaxing the constraints on the antennas. The simulations also show that giving primary carrier components (PCC) a privilege in power results in a large degradation in overall performance